Old Archives 2002-2004

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Like any good heretic, however, Satan didn’t bother to consider the quote in context. The very next line of Psalm 91 reads, “You will tread on the lion and the cobra; / you will trample the great lion and the serpent.” It’s a verse that hearkens back to the very beginning of Satan’s temptations, to the promise in the midst of the curse in Genesis 3:15: “He will crush your head, / and you will strike his heel.”

Maybe Satan was suffering from selective amnesia, or was just testing Jesus to see if he really was the Messiah. Whatever it was, Jesus answered Satan’s audacity in kind: “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”